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18/07/2008 - Les Milne, a member of the first New Zealand squash team to go overseas and who was a much respected player, administrator, manager, selector and sometime scribe died in Christchurch this week, on his 78th birthday. |
Milne was a winner of the first New Zealand junior boys' title in 1950 and toured Australia with the pioneering New Zealand senior team in 1953, the same year he was runner-up to Don Mochan for the men's national championship in Palmerston North.
In 1972, he returned to Australia as manager of the New Zealand men's and women's teams.
He would have subscribed to the view that finishing second was not all bad.
As Canterbury women's team coach and manager he was at the 1984 national championships in Napier where daughter, international Joanne Williams, reached the individual final and met and lost to world and British Open champion Susan Devoy (for the first of six occasions).
After the final, father, daughter and New Zealand women's coach Norm Coe posed for a cherished photograph, jocularly referring to themselves as "The three runners-up."
Also the South Island champion in 1955, Milne began playing at the then one-court Timaru Squash Rackets Club while still at Timaru BHS.
Like many other converted players, the strength of Milne's game was the volley. Tall and lean, he played A grade inter-club squash for Sumner up until the age of 48.
Another highlight of his career was playing two matches against seven-times British Open champion, the great Hashim Khan, who came to New Zealand with the Pakistan Air Force hockey team in 1952.
"Each time I felt he was just keeping me going so there was a game," Milne said years later.
The patron of Squash Canterbury, Milne was involved in the district's administration for nearly two decades, beginning as a statistician in 1967. He was association vice-president, president for three years and a senior selector for 15, being made a life member in 1984.
He was a manager of either the Canterbury men's or women's team and sometimes both from the inaugural national inter-districts event in 1972 through to 1984.
And for 10 years he was squash reporter of The Press, enabling him to look at the game "from a different angle".
A schoolteacher, Milne pursued that career in Dunedin, Tolaga Bay and Little River, before settling in Sumner with wife Margaret in 1965 and going on to teach at the then Hagley High School.
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